1. Field
The following description relates to an apparatus and method for testing web service interoperability, and more particularly, to an apparatus and method for testing whether or not web services constituting a business process normally interoperate with each other.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, web services are technology for supporting an Internet-based distributed computing environment using extensible markup language (XML)-based open standards. Also, web services provide data and service to an application program in logical units of another application program.
Web services use standardized web protocols and data formats such as hypertext transport protocol (HTTP), XML, and simple object access protocol (SOAP) to make an application program. Using the standardized web protocols and data formats, web services ensure smooth data flow among multiple computers regardless of a specific platform.
A web service may be separately used, or may be used together with other web services to compose a business process or value-added application service. A business process is systematically tested to detect and correct an error in advance, so that stability of the business process can be ensured.
However, when a business process is tested, web services constituting the business process are provided in the form of a black box and information on internal operations is insufficient. Also, since only static information such as a SOAP message format is provided or description of internal operations is mainly provided in informal documents, a web service may be misinterpreted when it is called from the outside and used.
Furthermore, a business providing system may crash when a business process composed of web services malfunctions, and an error that does not occur when one web service is separately tested may occur when the web service composes a new business process together with another web service.
As described above, a conventional web service test suggests methods for web service conformance in which it is checked whether one web service normally operates, but cannot suggest a method for efficiently testing whether composite web services systematically interoperate with each other.